Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Willow was just getting out of her SUV, when she saw the Gringo running along the creek shore like his life depended on it, and before she knew it, he was in the water, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
She ran across the lawn, saw an old couple pointing and a young boy shouting, and two little girls looking like they were in big trouble.
Jeremiah’s file box was on the picnic table, one file folder open, and sheets were blowing all over the place.
Before she could even figure out what the heck was going on, Jeremiah came trudging up the bank, soaked to the skin, holding his arm funny. Maybe he’d injured it.
Since he was apparently in no danger, though, she started gathering up the pages from the grass, noticing several of them had passages underlined in red.
As she gathered, she skimmed those passages, wondering what he’d found that so interested him.
Witness interviews. Mainly, the witnesses’ names were underlined.
And not all of them. In each statement one or two lines were also marked.
“Suspect ate there four times and witness waited on him each time,” in one.
“Suspect spent time at the Bluebonnet Inn,” with the owner’s name in another.
“Suspect purchased ammo from witness’s gun shop,” in a third.
She gathered the last few sheets and was tucking them back into the folder as Jeremiah walked back, so her back was to him, until she heard the odd little whimpering sound, and turned, puzzled.
The Gringo held a sopping wet puppy cradled in one arm against his chest. And the look in his eyes as he stroked the shivering little thing was the most honest expression she’d ever seen him wear. It struck her like a clapper strikes a bell.
The little boy, maybe ten or eleven, blew past Willow so fast he almost knocked her over. “You saved him! Man, you saved him! Thanks, Jeremiah!”
He scrambled the puppy from Jeremiah’s arms into his, and it licked his face happily.
The couple made it to them then, moving much slower than the little boy had. The two little girls walked along beside them, heads down.One of them looked up at Willow and she thought if her eyes got any bigger she’d fall in.
“Are you gonna arrest us?” she asked, reminding Willow that she was in uniform.
“For throwin’ the puppy in the water?” added the other.
“We thought he’d like swimmin’,” said the first.
“We like swimmin’,” explained the second.
“How’d you like it if some little heathen threw you in the creek?” asked the long-suffering big brother, hugging his dog.
The pup was light brown, with a black face. His legs were too long, and his head and feet were too big for his body.
Willow glanced at the grandparents, and at the girls, and then she crouched down low to put herself at eye-level with them. “Cruelty to animals is against the law. But I don’t think you meant to be cruel, did you?”
They shook their heads.
“From now on, you treat that puppy just like you would a little newborn baby, cause that’s what he is, really. And part of your job from now on is to protect him and watch out for him. And when he grows up, he’ll protect and watch over you. You think you can you do that?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” they said in unison.
“You promise?”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
“Well, all right then. I’ll let you off with a warnin’ this time, long as you keep that promise.”
They turned and ran back to their own picnic table, followed by their brother, carrying his wet pup. Of them all, the puppy seemed the least upset by events.
The grandparents thanked Jeremiah profusely, then went limping back and ordered the kids to pack up their toys and get back in the car. They were taking their meal to go. They’d clearly had enough.
Willow faced Jeremiah, and he said, “Why are you smiling?”
“I didn’t know I was.” But she must be. She was suffused in what felt like warm syrup from her head to her toes, and she wasn’t even sure why. Her throat was tight, and her eyes were suspiciously warm.
She nodded at the food. “You want to eat soakin’ wet, or…”
He peeled off his T-shirt, and she stopped smiling, and that warm syrup heated to a low simmer as she gawked at his chest and shoulders, and when he turned to drape the T-shirt over a nearby tree limb, his back.
Suddenly aware she hadn’t done so in too long, Willow took a breath, and it might’ve been noisy.
“You okay, Willow?”
“Good. Good.” His eyes are up there. She lifted her gaze. He was sitting down, wet jeans and all, and reaching for his meal.
So she sat down across from him and reached for hers. It was perfect, exactly what she always got there.
“It’s a little creepy you knowin’ my order by heart, you know that, Gringo?”
He looked across at her. “I can see that. It isn’t that I stalked you. I just heard you order it when we were with the whole gang a few weeks ago, and it stuck in my mind.”
She remembered. It had been hot, and the entire tribe of cousins, adopted cousins, and cousins-in-law had come for ice cream one Sunday.
“You got some kind of super-powered memory, do you?” It was so distracting, talking to him naked from the waist up. She took a long pull from her straw, then focused on her sandwich.
“Just where you’re concerned,” he said.
She stopped chewing, then finished and drank to wash it down. “Why?”
“Why what?” He’d downed half his burger already.
“Why just where I’m concerned?”
He shrugged and kept on eating. Between bites, he said, “I don’t really know. Something about you makes me…pay attention. That’s all. I swear I’m not creepy.”
She laughed and then when she caught hold of herself again, she said, “You jumped in a creek to save a puppy, Gringo. You’re the furthest thing from creepy.”
“What was I gonna do? It’s a puppy.”
She laughed again. Then she nodded at his file folder. “You’re already finding things of interest, I see.”
His smile died as his eyes shifted from hers to the folder and back again.
“The pages were blowin’ all over. I noticed the red underlines when I picked ‘em up. Lucky I came along when I did, or the whole thing would’ve been gone.” Not really. It wasn’t like she’d have loaned Uncle Garrett’s only copies out without backing them up. She’d made copies.
He said, “Just…people he interacted with. I thought I might talk to some of them. What? You’re making a face.”
“I’m just wonderin’ what you hope to get out of that.” Then she shrugged. “But it’s none of my business.”
“I don’t really know what I hope to get out of it, either. I’m just…following my gut. I want to talk to who he talked to. I want to stand where he stood, see what he saw, much as I can.”
She gazed at him and her heart hurt for him. She could not imagine having the upbringing he’d had. Plenty of money, from the sounds of things. But not one bit of love.
“I can help,” she said. “We can retrace your dad’s steps through Quinn together, if you want. You know, when I’m not on duty.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Sure, I would. You’re family.” She tapped the file folder. “I gotta go. You figure out where you want to start and we can re-convene tomorrow. All right?”
“Sounds good,” he said.
She got up, gathered her rubbish and took it to the trash bin on the way back to her car. She’d read his background check three times before Uncle Garrett had interrupted her, but she didn’t think she’d really known anything real about Jeremiah until she’d seen the look in his eyes with that puppy.
A doubting little voice inside whispered that Jeremiah wasn’t like the people she knew, that he’d been raised by criminals, and that he withheld information as if he had something to hide. He assumed others did the same. He was neither trusting nor trustworthy, her little voice said.
But she knew a gangly pup who thought otherwise.
Jeremiah didn’t particularly want a peace officer following him around Quinn while he hunted for a half-million in gold that, for all he knew, might be stolen.
If it wasn’t stolen, it was at least what the cops would call ill-gotten, which meant they’d confiscate it, which meant he’d be in trouble.
There were issues holding up the execution of his father’s will, and his existing funds wouldn’t last forever.
He pulled over onto the side of the road in front of the address in the police file labeled The Bluebonnet Country Inn.
Only it wasn’t blue and it wasn’t an inn.
It was a white two-story Georgian with flower boxes, a pristine sidewalk, and a Cat Shaw Realty sign on the lawn.
Cat’s headshot smiled at them from the lawn sign, right over her phone number.
Willow pulled up facing him in her personal pickup, not her Sheriff’s Department SUV.
She got out and so did he, and she came walking toward him all long and lean in jeans and boots and a T shirt with a plaid flannel one over it, unbuttoned.
She wore a white cowboy hat that contrasted with her jet hair.
They met at the paved driveway’s mouth, where stone pillars held a black iron gate that stood wide open. He tore his eyes off her to take a look at the place itself. Where would you bury gold around here?
“I don’t see an inn sign,” he said.
“Yeah,” Willow said. “I never heard of the Bluebonnet Inn, and I’ve lived here my whole life.”
They walked up the driveway to the place. There were no curtains in any of its tall windows, but there was a car in the driveway. Wait, he knew that car.
“Isn’t that Cat’s car?” Willow asked like she’d recognized it at the same instant. She didn’t wait for an answer, just marched up to the door, knocked twice and then opened it and leaned inside. “Cat, you in here?”
“Depends on who’s askin’!” The voice floated down from the second story, and soon her footsteps followed. Cat’s brown & silver curls were covered in a purple paisley bandana, and she was brushing her hands together. “Oh, hey Willow,” she said, then with a very curious look, “and Jeremiah!”